A recorded speech of Vice President Leni Robredo which was posted on YouTube last March 13 by anti-drug network DRCNet Foundation reveals her saying that the Philippine National Police is implementing an alleged “palit-ulo” scheme.
This, said Robredo, literally means “exchange heads, where the wife or husband or relative of a person in a so-called drug list will be taken if the person himself could not be found”.
In the recorded video, Robredo said, “In some areas in Manila where poverty is rampant, residents tell us that communities are rounded up, in places like basketball courts, women separate from men, those with tattoos asked to stand in a corner, their belongings searched.”
Those rounded up in poor communities, said Robredo, are told by the authorities that they didn’t have the right to demand for search warrants, because they were squatters and did not own the property on which their houses were built.
According to DRCNet Foundation the video will be played at the “Human Rights Challenge: Responding to Extrajudicial Killings in the Drug War,” a side session that it organized for the 60th United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs annual meeting to be held on Thursday, March 16, at the Vienna International Center, reported by GMA News. -KCO
